


Winter

by summerstorm



Category: Wizards of Waverly Place
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Incest Overtones, Love Potion/Spell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-22
Updated: 2010-07-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 17:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a really hot summer, so Alex casts her room into winter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annemari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annemari/gifts).



> For a TV episode title drabble meme, prompt Justin/Alex - I Can't Get Started. I've only seen a handful of episodes of the show (and the movie), so don't expect any sort of canon compliance.

Alex likes to start things in the middle. The way she sees it, why bother with the basics when you can have what you want right away? It's like if you had the chance to go to, like, Italy and decided that was too far away too soon and you'd prefer to spend the weekend in New Jersey. Like, who even _does_ that?

Justin, that's who, and that perfectly exempl— examp— _Justin_, that's who. Enough said.

So she starts in the middle, because it's not so far removed from her experience that she will cause a natural disaster, but it's advanced enough that she'll get to her real destination this century.

But sometimes learning how to turn a cupboard into a working freezer when the air conditioner isn't working is just way too boring, okay? And hot, and it makes her sweat. Alex doesn't like sweating. So she gives up and starts at the end.

*

"Alex, did you _freeze your room_?" Justin says thirty minutes later, because he has the worst timing ever and couldn't wait to check up on her until — never, because she doesn't need a babysitter. But in this particular case he couldn't wait until she managed to fix it all herself. Which she would have.

As soon as she was able to move her feet.

"H-hot," Alex manages. "Needed to— r'fr'sh–" She takes a deep breath and her voice cuts through the room when she says, "_Cool down_," as angry as two words that take so much effort can sound.

Her eyelashes are sticking together so stupidly she can barely see the cloud of warm air that leaves her mouth. Warm air she _needs_. God, she needs to learn a spell to turn the air warm.

"You can't even make ice cubes. You can't even make ice cubes from _water_," Justin points out, ever so helpful, and Alex throws him a little glare. She can totally make ice cubes. So they taste like mango, that's an issue with the spell, not her. And she'd say that if she could speak through the clattering of her teeth. "Right," he says, looking around and cowardly stepping into her room with just the one foot. "Come here."

She obviously _can't_.

"Fine, I'll go there," Justin says, turning away, "but you owe me. It's not my job to save you from cryogenization every time you decide to cast winter into our home."

He comes back in something that feels somewhere between half a second and three million years with a blanket, and wraps it around her before dragging her into the hallway. Then, he closes her bedroom door, grabs his wand and murmurs something she doesn't catch.

The door opens to a mostly warm room, though some of her furniture is soaked in water.

He charms it dry, and it's all good, except she's still freaking freezing.

"I've never done the warming spell before." Justin puts her foot down. Of course he'd do that now, when Alex is about to die a premature icy death. "I'm not trying it on a person the first time. _Just like_ you shouldn't try a freezing spell on a room when you can't even make an ice cube. Especially with you inside that room."

Alex nods until Justin finally looks down and notices she's so cold she can't even absorb his words right now — not that she would if she could, but that's beside the point — and he's just wasting her time. And his time. Maybe. Alex can't think of anything Justin could possibly be doing that wouldn't be a waste of his time, and if he can do nothing worth doing with his time, then everything he does stops being a waste of his time and starts being a waste of his life, and—

Okay, there's something. He's — warm. He's snuggling with her on the floor — she still can't move, and she's not letting him pick her up — and he's _warm_. Alex relaxes into his body, feeling the trickles of melting ice on her collar send goosebumps down her back, watching drops of water fall from her hair and onto his wrist, slipping down around his knuckles.

He's humming something, she realizes. Some loser lullaby about robots. And she'd totally point that out, too. Actually, she's filing that away for future mocking. Right now, she needs to focus on getting warmer, and his body heat is doing wonders for that. She's not risking him going away just because the instinct to mess with him is so strong. She'd have to ask him to come back, and that would make him think she, like, needs him, so she wouldn't do it, and then her parents would get home and find her dead in the hallway, wrapped in a blanket with her hair sticking to her head a__nd her clothes all—god, it would be such an ugly way to die.

Right, so, lesson learned: never start at the end. That's totally doable.

She can still start in the middle.

(But maybe next time she'll read the safety footnotes first.)


End file.
